Mens Rea • Ikka | II
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A/N:- @dukh-dard-peeda this one is specially for the world cup final babe. This time we look at events from Shauryaman's pov. The following chapters will have several povs shifting according to the progression of events. Also the real story begins after this so— ig another character study and background setting for this chapter. Also @pavbhajisupremacist plz forgive my mistakes relating to the technicalities of the Mumbai life :(
Warning: mentions of sexual assault and harrasment
Word Count: 17.2K+
Masterlist
Chapter II
But I was not a heavenly child A savage with a temperament wild
The sound of the sitar was in perfect harmony with the gentle roar of the waves, creating a pleasing symphony in the background.
If he closed his eyes, he could picture the way those lithe fingers were pressing and twinging the string instrument as an almost haunting melody wafted in the cool autumn breeze. The sea foam swirled benign through his bare toes.
A sudden giggling from beside broke his reverie.
The girl was so small, she barely reached his waist. There was a massive sun hat over her curly head, creating an umbrella-esque shade over her tiny body and she was donned in a bright denim dress with sunflowers stitched into the frilly skirt.
Her hand was small enough to fit between two of his fingers.
“Papa! The sea is eating me!”, she shrieked in part delight and part alarm, as the sand pulled beneath her chubby feet making the girl gurgle in joy and jump.
He felt a laugh burst out of him and he bent swiftly and caught her, pulling her up, till the squirming toddler was wrapped in his arms. Her sunhat was hanging around her neck now and he could smell the soft powdery scent of her shampoo as her inky curls brushed his jaw.
“The sea isn’t eating you, sweetheart. The waves pull back rhythmically against the shore because of the gravitational pull of the moon.”
The girl stared at him with round baffled eyes and he sighed, internally debating the finer points of teaching sixth standard geography to a five year old.
He brushed a lock of her hair off that miniscule cherubic face which made his daughter giggle again and then sneeze. His heart had ballooned inside his chest like it would explode with all the love that seemed to travel like lightning through his veins.
He covered her cheeks with kisses, much to the toddler’s delight and breathless protests.
“Papa..papa stop..it tickles..hihihi”, she patted his face away with soft hands.
He chuckled and pressed his nose on the crown of her hair, inhaling the sweet milky scent of pure innocence, so unmarred from the filth of the world and the wickedness of men. He wished he could bubble wrap her and keep her locked inside his ribcage forever.
His mother’s music had reached a soothing crescendo behind and he wondered where she had put up her mat to sit and play the instrument.
Why were they on the beach anyway?
He couldn’t remember.
The sun was setting, having turned the horizon into shades of mauve and light orange. The air was turning chilly and his daughter was almost asleep, drowsy and blinking those large lashed eyes, little face tucked inside the crook of his neck.
“Where is your grandmother?”, he asked, absent minded and tried searching for the source of the music.
He couldn’t see her.
That ever familiar small dainty figure with a thick curly braid reaching till her knees, always wrapped in the softest of pastel hued chiffon sarees that he loved to bury his face against whilst hugging her, the scent of her english rose perfume and the fragrance of vanilla had misted in the air
There was sand and rocks everywhere.
The music seemed to get fainter and fainter and a slow tension had started simmering inside him.
“Maa?”
He called out but there was only the waves and the dying music and his own echoes answering him. Then his arms felt empty, the comfortable weight limp against his chest and shoulder was gone and he realised with a start that his daughter had vanished into thin air.
Panic clawed into his throat viciously and he couldn’t breathe. He looked around desperately and there was not a single person in sight. The air inside his lungs was lead and a sudden, sharp and rank odor made him almost gag.
There was a body spread almost eagle shaped on the ground, a few feet in front.
The dark blood soaking the sand around in a macabre pool was visible even in the dim light of dusk. He didn’t want to go there but it was like his body was being controlled by someone else. He couldn’t stop his feet from moving.
His heart was hammering so hard, he could keel over any moment.
It was a woman.
Not his mother.
Not his daughter.
A young woman, mutilated and violated, the scraps of her white saree barely clinging onto her bluish tinged ashen skin. Her eyes were turned towards him, as if boring into his soul, accusation bright and clear in their watery depths.
He felt his knees buckle and something grip his throat with brutal force.
He couldn’t breathe.
He knew her.
She was saying something. The dead body. Her mouth was bloody and open and illegible words fell from her lips like dribbling poison. He raised a shaking hand towards her but couldn’t reach her, his strength failing midway.
He would drown on dry earth.
Drown beneath the sand and the sea and the music playing like the summoning of death in his ears.
There was no respite for him, no retribution, no redemption— only a reckoning.
A loud crash brought him back to reality.
Shauryaman hissed and almost fell off the bartop as he straightened from his painful slouch on the table. There was a bull playing banjo inside his head and he could feel the individual throb agony shoot down his spine.
His mouth felt like someone had poured acid and cement down his throat, in that order.
The dim lighting of the nightclub felt fortunately easy on his eyes as he slapped his own face a few times, trying to hit the oncoming lethargy and spike of nausea away. Someone had forgotten to put out the music and it kept on playing on a horrible loop of some nineties bollywood number in the background.
The bartender was snoring on his seat.
Shauryaman debated kicking him off his chair and then resisted the urge and gingerly climbed down the stool. His legs took some time to steady beneath him and his head felt like a thousand kilos atop his neck.
A quick squint at his watch told him that it was near dawn.
Some of his drinking companions were sprawled over the couches in the back, completely hammered and out like the light. The scent of alcohol, perfume and heavy tobacco was cloying and felt like solid smoke as he neared the bunch, silently.
The high end escort that the ring leader had hired was nowhere to be seen. If the fools were lucky, they might still have their expensive watches and wallets intact. But then, prostitutes who worked the clients in this particular club knew better than to rob their regular patrons.
No one wanted to get in the crosshairs of the club owner.
Or rather, the man who was the face, at the least.
“Fuck! Hey richie rich— what the hell did you feed us man?”, a growl from the pile of bodies startled him bad enough to almost step back. He had been inspecting the white residue left on the black center table kept in front.
The smell was distinctive enough.
“Ambrosia, Rags. What— don’t like the downside that much, do you?”
Shauryaman grinned and surreptitiously slipped the mobile phone that had been lying on the table inside the hidden pocket of his leather jacket.
‘Rags’, was the name the Mumbai underworld had given Raghav Chotan— drug kingpin and the supposed right hand man of the most dangerous mob boss in the city. His distribution network ran most of the street trash circulated in the more underprivileged localities in town.
He was a paranoid man and for good reason.
The police had been on his scent for many high profile contract killings for years.
Rags coughed and grimaced, sitting up from his perch and caught the bottle of water that Shauryaman had chucked at him. He finished half of it and was seemingly about to say something when a loud ringing shattered the otherwise quiet of the club.
“Fucker! Switch it off!”, some drunkard yelled from the other corner.
“You fuck off fucker! Do you know who I am—”, Rags yelled back, tried to stand up and then promptly fell back down on his ass.
Shauryaman stifled a groan and tapped at the man’s pocket that had been vibrating for the past one minute.
“It's your phone idiot, pick it up!”
The other man grumbled but acquiesced, putting the phone to his ear and spitting curses in Marathi, seemingly before the other person could have even spoken. But suddenly he straightened and started nodding, saying, ‘yes boss, sorry boss’ rapidly for the next one minute.
Shauryaman raised an eyebrow questioningly and Raghav grinned at him.
“Today’s your lucky day, rich boy. My boss wants to meet you. Get ready by eleven. I’ll send you the address—”, he said, trying to slap his back but missed it by one centimeter and almost fell on his face on the table.
Shauryaman had to resist the urge to vibrate out of his skin in sheer adrenaline.
Fucking finally!
______________________
It was almost eleven when Shauryaman pulled inside the driveway of one of the most dangerous men in the city.
If one wanted to stay in power in Maharashtra, it was imminent that they built a relationship with Tony Braganza.
The multibillionaire business tycoon had risen the ranks of the Mumbai underworld through every organized crime possible. The brothels in the red light district, the drugs being sold to both the celebrities in tinsel town and the seediest underbelly of the city, the smuggling racket in the ports, extortion, murder, contract killing— you name it and Braganza has done it.
He has his fat fingers in every pie, has business dealings with media giants and industrialists, has been called to bollywood celebrities’ houses and has ties with both the sitting government and the opposition.
It was also nigh impossible to get close to the gangster on your own volition.
You don’t call Tony Braganza, he calls you.
And thus, Shauryaman had to wait, for an excruciating amount of time, to even get close to the so-called mafia leader.
The arched gateway of the ostentatious mansion of the supposed king of the Mumbai underworld was guarded better than Fort Knox, itself. The rotating shift of armed security kept a tight vigil and there were three entry checks on the main gate before his car had even been allowed inside.
Shauryaman had chosen the red corvette today— one of the most expensive and fancy cars he owned. He was wearing a white shirt, opened scandalously at the collar and blue jeans, a casual fit, not too much effort but the watch on his wrist could buy the entire showroom full of sports cars and his shoes were custom made Givenchy. The black Prada sunglasses were strategically placed to hide his eyes.
He had wrapped himself in obscene wealth— the gait deliberate of a rich smug-ass brat who had more money than sense. There was that cavalier arrogance befitting a vain prince in the quirk of his lips and the attitude with which he had slammed the door of the car after skidding to the front porch at high speed and thrown the keys to the valet.
A master performance.
Like sheep skin stretched over his body— white, fluffy and completely vulnerable to the wolves inside.
‘Look a baby clown’, they would say, ‘look the stupid spoiled heir to the Gaur billions’, they would laugh in sadistic glee, ‘look at the puppet we have caught’, they would cheer.
And he would play along, smile his lazy, self satisfied smiles and open up his wallet to the crooks.
He had waited a decade for this.
Ten long years.
Four years to just get in contact with Rags and through his extensive list of contacts and indulging his gruesome gang of goons and the rest six to befriend the man enough so that he would lead him straight to his next step.
Yes, Tony Braganza was a big fish.
For some, perhaps the don was the biggest fish in the sea, but not for him.
Shauryaman wanted the fisherman.
And the first step towards catching the fisherman was to find the biggest fucking fish in the sea.
The receptionist ushered him inside the house and they walked out of the big French windows on the other side to the perfectly mowed lawn. There were shaded groves along the outer boundary and trimmed hedges with exotic flowers and was that a fucking peacock?
The entire property had been sealed with signal jammers. No weapons or electronic devices were allowed inside.
“Hey! Shaurya— over here!”
Raghav ‘Rags’ Chotan hollered and Shauryaman turned to the right and almost dropped his facade being face to face with the notorious gangster of Mumbai.
Tony Braganza looked exactly how he looked in the photos. Somehow managing to resemble both the celebrity coverage in Filmfare done a month prior and the mugshot photos taken more than two decades ago, when the former had still been an enforcer for Haji Mastan.
Seated on a lounge chair, a Cuban cigar clenched in one hand, bedecked in his signature all-white look and gold rimmed glasses, Braganza was a behemoth of a man with a scar cutting diagonally through his stern face.
The man was staring at Shauryaman like he could visually dissect him into seven layers and inspect his molecules.
It was unnerving to be pinned like that.
Shauryaman gave a lazy wave and sauntered towards them in a practiced unhurried gait. He was walking towards a mountain bear with the countenance of a man strolling inside his garden.
“Mr. Braganza, delighted!”, he extended his hand for a shake.
Tony did not even glance at his hand, not bothering to take it. Just gestured with his eyes to the seat in front. Shauryaman shrugged and sat down, stretching his legs in an angular fashion and waited, hands atop his belly.
“Uhh boss.. This was the man I was talking about— Shauryaman Gaur he—”, Rags stuttered but a single hand from his employer had him shutting up.
“I know who you are, kid. Many years ago, I had offered your father power beyond imagination but he had refused. Something about his company’s ideals and never associating with the likes of me. So imagine my surprise when his son started hanging around my boys.”
Those beady eyes were trained almost eerily on his face.
Shauryaman gave the most disgustingly empty headed smile he could possibly conjure.
“My father..lets just say he has the typical yesteryear ideas of doing business. The man has no concept of how to move with the times—”, he drawled.
“And you do?”, the kingpin raised an eyebrow.
“I know the importance of building the correct alliance.”
“Indeed. I heard you got married. So tell me, how is married life treating the infamous rake of Malabar Hills?”
It was with a Herculean effort that Shauryaman had to stop himself from stilling. There was a contemplative look on the other man’s face. He was testing him— he knew that. Yet the words had prodded at a door he had firmly slammed shut while coming here. He couldn’t let the mobster peek through that.
Never.
Not..her.
Shauryaman grinned and hooked one of his legs over the other.
“She is a sweet little thing. A bit dumb if you ask me. But I am quite certain that I own a percentage of Laconte now”, he finished.
Tony stared at him for a good long minute before cracking a golden toothed smile. It looked remarkably ugly on his hairless face.
The man could play a live action mountain troll.
“Good for you”, the big man suddenly gestured for the attendant that the younger man hadn’t even noticed had come up to stand beside his chair.
The woman couldn’t have been older than twenty.
She was beautiful.
The kind of prettiness that was more girlish but somehow had been enhanced through makeup and accessories.
She bent down beside him and poured the tea into the cup for him in all probability. In this way, the girl’s thighs were visible from the slit of her pencil skirt. Her hair was pinned in a professional bun and Shauryaman could see the pink cats she had drawn on her nails.
He felt his stomach drop to his knees.
Tony Braganza was leering at him. He could feel the gaze of the older man over his skin like pepper over a hot pan. He knew what was expected. His heart slid off his knees and dropped to his feet.
Shauryaman braced himself internally and stared lecherously at the bare skin exposed on the girl’s legs and ran a hand over her clothed hip in a very provocative way. The worst part was instead of flinching back and snarling at him, the girl turned and gave him a sweet smile.
As if it was expected.
Normal.
The gangster was appraising him still and Shauryaman swallowed the bile back inside his throat, apologized to the poor girl profusely in his mind and smacked the girl’s ass. She gasped and gave him another sickly saccharine smile but there was no light in her eyes.
Tony Braganza laughed aloud and swatted the girl away like she was an insignificant fly hovering over his fruit basket and that flicker of suspicion in his dark eyes had finally extinguished.
“You were right, he is a little perve, isn’t he?”, the older man told his right hand man who laughed at the joke in his typical raunchy fashion.
“I prefer the word connoisseur, sir”, Shauryaman layered on the slick a little thicker.
The gag reflex should have been non-existent at this point.
“Okay, back to business, then. Chotan tells me that you can help with the building permit plans of the new string of clubs I want to open in Andheri?”
Finally—
Shauryaman tilted his head and gave him a nasty smile.
“I might know a man who knows a man…”
Hook.
The old mobster leaned in front, blowing a ring of smoke right on his face. Shauryaman didn’t even bat the cloud of expensive tobacco away.
“And what do you want in return, little prince?”, the older man asked, teeth bared more like a predator about to sink its fangs into a hapless prey than a businessman sealing a deal.
Shauryaman smirked and seemingly observed the gold wedding band glinting in the sunshine on his finger before taking a sip of the tea offered to him.
“I want a seat at the table. I want to meet the..benefactors”
Line.
There was a chilling silence following his words and Shauryaman wondered whether he had accidentally shown his hand. The mafia leader was as unreadable as a sphinx. Rags was shifting on his seat, looking uncomfortable with the sudden seriousness that had descended in the atmosphere.
“You want to play in the big leagues..huh?”, Tony said finally.
Shauryaman cocked his head to the other side and pouted slightly which he knew made him look childishly pretty sometimes and pretty idiotic, at other times.
It may have worked because Braganza licked his lips slightly and then leaned back more comfortably.
“Tell you what, Mr. Gaur. You get me those permit plans and I will personally accompany you to the big boys’ table.”
Shauryaman’s smirk stretched till it split his face in two, the naked delight on his handsome features were reminiscent of a child being promised his favourite toy.
Tony Braganza watched him for some seconds and then mirrored his smile, if only, on the older man’s scarred face it looked somehow ghastly.
Sinker.
_______________________
Shauryaman had made a beeline for the bathroom as soon as he had reached the house, and hadn't even checked whether Meenakshi had returned from her office.
After the deal, Raghav had taken him to some pub and he had watched the other man sell his weight in cocaine, molly and something that was being called angel dust on the streets. Notable amongst his customers had been people associated with two bollywood a-listers, a very prominent sportstar and the usual clientele of a drug lord.
By the time he had entered the front porch of his house, the layers had started peeling alarmingly fast and he could feel the bile that he had suppressed since the beginning of the day, start to flood his mouth.
He had barely managed to reach the sink in time.
He didn’t know what had prompted the nausea to break open— the dream, the stupid blood alcohol level he was carrying at the moment, the way Tony Braganza had roved his beady little beetle eyes over him like he was a piece of meat waiting to be exploited, or the way he had unwillingly touched the server girl.
Whether it was breathing in the stale smoke of hookah and cubans and the nascent toxicity of lines of coke in front or the overdressed hookers splaying their sharp nails all over his chest.
After the porcelain god had had mercy on him, Shauryaman had ripped open his clothes, turned the shower to the hottest setting possible and jumped under the spray. The heat seared his skin and he started rubbing soap over it almost savagely.
It was like the sheep skin had melded into his own skin and try as he might, he couldn’t separate the two.
The taste of alcohol and lipstick and the metallic tang of blood was painfully sickening inside his mouth. The force with which he used the tongue scraper almost made him bleed.
The entire washroom had fogged up because of the heat and anyone would have jumped out of the water by now but he couldn’t even move a single muscle.
His mind had always been a torture trap of its own.
Vitriolic. Unforgiving. Punishing.
Was it worth it?
All this theatre—
This tiring dangerous game of smoke and mirrors?
Hadn’t his arrogance resulted in one catastrophe already, the biggest mistake of his life, that he was readily committing a thousand more?
Will any of this even be fruitful?
He couldn’t get the powdery fragrance he had conjured up for his so-called daughter out of his mind. It blanketed everything else in a powerful wave. The haunting echo of his mother’s sitar only added to the building anxiety inside his chest.
Suddenly there were hands over him.
He could feel the echoes of the vicious blows that had cracked his bones, the blind desperation to survive, the taste of his own blood flowing inside his mouth, the boot stamped over his throat— someone had a fist full of his hair and was dragging his body against the road even as he struggled to escape.
His breathing had exponentially shot up till he could practically hear himself trying to heave.
Oh god, he can’t be having a stupid episode right now—
Not again.
But the signs were clear.
The breath falling short, his ribs tightening hard enough that it felt like his lungs would pop out, his entire torso was on fire. He saw dark spots dance in front of his eyes and scrabbled helplessly on the wet wall, trying to keep his wobbling legs in place.
It wouldn’t do to crack his skull open on the bathroom tiles.
“Shaurya!”
A sudden clear voice cut through the hammering of his heart inside his ears and his vision cleared slowly.
Meenakshi.
Her voice rang with that same mixture of irritation and annoyance that she always used while speaking to him. She was knocking impatiently on the door.
“If your fourteen-step everything-shower is over, can you come out? I need to go to a client meeting around nine and I need the bathroom!”
Shauryaman cleared his throat once and then twice and when he was fairly confident his voice wouldn’t wobble too much, he shouted back.
“There are thirty washrooms in this mansion!”
“All my products are inside this one! Come out fast, mister mermaid.”
An involuntary chuckle broke out of him at her exasperated tone and the ridiculous claim of him being a water nymph. He imagined her standing outside, stomping her foot, angry like a cute red button, those beautiful hazel irises burning fire.
It was strange how his wife’s anger at having been kept waiting for the shower had seemingly broken through his anxiety.
“Give me five”, he called back and quickly turned off the shower and patted himself dry.
When he finally opened the door, Meenakshi had indeed been standing there, tapping her foot impatiently on the wooden paneling of the floor of their bedroom. She took one look at him and her anger vanished into bafflement.
“Wow..you look like a lobster having been left for too long inside a sauna—”
Shauryaman rolled his eyes and sidestepped her, clutching the knot of the towel he had hastily tied around his waist.
“Who keeps client meetings at nine o’clock at night?”, he grumbled.
“Businessmen and every consultancy firm ever—”, she had come to stand beside him near the wardrobe and he almost jumped at the sudden unprecedented proximity, “but…are you okay? You look…strangely jumpy”, she sounded concerned.
Shauryaman suddenly missed the time when they had been avoiding each other because of ‘The Fight’.
No— he countered himself immediately the moment the thought had come.
He didn’t miss that time.
Never.
He had been miserable.
Well, more miserable than usual.
Shauryaman could have never guessed that he would actually miss fighting with his wife. The silence of those days were only slightly less heavy than the guilt that had smothered him from the very second he had uttered those godforsaken words.
Now, Shauryaman knew he was capable of a depraved level of cruelty when it suited him but the moment he had seen his wife’s angry face turn ashen, it had hit him like a freight train to the gut.
He had said those terrible words to hurt her.
Because she had hurt him.
He had never been so affected by the words and doings of anyone before.
Maybe Avantika could make him react just as badly, but Meenakshi seemed to have done a masters on the subject. She could raise an eyebrow and he would feel his temper flare, she would give him a condescending smirk and he would want to immediately snarl back, she would spit words coated in poison— words that many people have quoted to him in worse ways and yet it would twist inside his chest like acid coated arrows and draw blood.
When she had brought Avantika in the argument, she had torn open an already tender wound. She had reached into his chest, snapped all his ribs in two and ripped his beating heart out of his body with bloodied nails and shredded it in front of him.
It shouldn’t have hurt so much.
Many people have said over the years that he was essentially incapable of love.
Hell, Avantika herself had screamed it to his face the last time they had talked.
And still, it had felt like this time it had hurt worse.
Shauryaman was weak like that. He couldn’t swallow agony with grace. He had to turn around and spit it back. So he had lashed out the best way he could. Pulled out the only weakness he had found out in Meenakshi Bannerjee, sharpened that knife and plunged it inside her chest.
The way he had found her later, statuesque and frozen under the icy spray of water— drenched and shivering, eyes blown wide and completely unresponsive, it had broken his heart.
The way she had laid limp in his arms when he had carried her out.
The guilt had hit so hard then that he could barely look at her trembling figure. He had barked some instructions at Vimmi tai and bolted from there. He had wished the earth would break open and swallow him whole.
It was not like it had even been her fault.
Anyone would have lost their temper at the way he had behaved. She didn’t know what that man was capable of.
She didn’t know that Shauryaman felt like throwing up, curling into a ball and crying whenever he would catch the mere sight of Prakhar Sahani.
She didn’t know the sheer magnitude of restraint he had to employ to stop from scratching that man’s eyes out, the way his supposedly soothing baritone felt like nails against a chalkboard to him.
And he couldn’t even do her the courtesy of telling her the truth.
The ugly bitter horrific truth of the man his wife had trusted like everyone else.
The words would come at the base of his throat and coagulate like solid sludge. The terror would grip his lungs and squeeze demonically till he couldn’t breathe. The panic attack snapping its bloodied jaws at his heels the moment he would try to utter the words.
‘She won’t believe you’, his demons sounded suspiciously like Prakhar.
‘No one would believe you. Your own father didn’t care. Who would believe a womanizer sex addict like you—’, they would laugh.
And he would swallow it all down.
Even if he wanted to rip the fucker’s arm off anytime he would see him throw it on his father’s shoulders, as if in innocent camaraderie, or pat Meenakshi on the back, or graze close to them.
Shauryaman was so weak he couldn’t even warn them, too repressed, too wrapped up in his own fear and the threat Prakhar had so benignly given him all those years ago.
He couldn’t let Harshvardhan know the truth.
Not that.
It will break his father’s heart.
It will kill him.
So he stayed mum.
Shame had always been a close friend and wrapped its terribly heavy arms around him like an obsessive lover, more often than not.
But this kind of remorse had teeth.
Claws that could rip through anything.
Shauryaman remembered spending those two months of silence, sequestered inside his mother’s room, trying to pour every functioning brain cell into the board in front, steeped in his own agendas. But to no avail.
Meenakshi had somehow carved a space inside him and now occupied it like a queen on her throne, unconquered and infallible.
Then that fateful night, he had fallen asleep on the table like an idiot and his wife had almost found out everything. Thanks to that irritating demonic bug that had distracted everyone enough for him to remove the evidence. He shouldn’t have been studying in the open.
But then, if he hadn’t— maybe he would have never reconciled with his wife— or whatever truce they had managed to come up with wouldn’t have occurred.
Meenakshi was still staring at him, concern clear in her big eyes, now.
Her hair had curled a little from the humidity outside from its natural beachy waves and he resisted the urge to run his fingers through the silken strands. It was a chore staying away from her most days— a task to walk around her, feel her warmth beside him on the bed, see her cut down men thrice her size in the boardroom with the easy demeanor of a warrior general and not being permitted to touch.
Just to see if she was even real or a figment of his deluded mind.
The first time Harshvardhan had proposed the alliance, Shauryaman had thrown a mother of all fits. Not only was he not interested in having any long standing relationship after Avantika, but also— he hadn’t wanted to bring another innocent person into the equation.
But his father had been adamant and had taken out the last weapon in his arsenal.
“Either you marry, Ms. Bannerjee, or you can get out of all my properties and I will freeze all your accounts—”
At literally any other time, he would have turned around and left but he had already been too deep in his plan. He had spent so many days and burned so many bridges and worked so fucking hard to reach where he is and he couldn’t throw it away.
So he had acquiesced and hoped the girl would turn out to be a dumb bimbo and would stay out of his way. She had obviously been far from it.
Meenakshi Bannerjee had come like a storm in his life— uprooting every single thing he had thought about her, tearing through all his defences with the unbothered efficiency of a military general.
She was a chaotic wildfire that followed no rules, was bound by no one and could care less for his idiosyncrasies.
Shauryaman was terrified of his wife.
And he was terrified for her.
Meenakshi was like a lotus, blooming in the muck of his life and completely unaware about the snakes he had attracted intentionally, that swam underwater, orbiting their world in venomous subterfuge.
He couldn’t suck her into the nightmare his life had become. So he had let her believe whatever the tabloids said, let her form her conclusions based on the flawed data he fed her religiously and let her detest him.
But surprisingly enough, Meenakshi, unlike literally everyone else in his life, seemed determined to crack open all his shells and find out the truth. She wouldn’t be taken in by the falsities so easily and maybe he was tired of playacting all the time as well.
Shauryaman didn’t remember the last time he had actually felt like himself.
Then he saw her watching a baking show sitting on the couch, the silk of her blue nightsuit falling in effortlessly elegant lines over her amber cream body, the polished clean nails that she kept surprisingly short and efficient, the pleasantly relaxed posture that had seemingly poked and prodded at him.
He had been so bone tired from all the partying and the sex and Raghav fucking Chotan dragging him all over town and pouring over every detail on a decade old case— he had just let go.
He would never forget the look of pleased delight on her face when biting into the muffins the next morning.
He had taken her out to lunch, shown her the place only he and his mother had ever visited. Let his wife of seven months inside one of the deepest, darkest cobwebbed corners of his heart that he hadn’t even been able to open for Avantika.
The woman he had supposedly loved.
The kiss was another thing he resolutely refused to even think about.
The way she had moaned into his mouth, dragging him in like she wanted to devour him, the fragrance of her spicy, addictive perfume, the taste of her lipstick and the way her tongue had battled in drunken ecstasy alongside his own.
Shauryaman deserved an award for the restraint he had shown that night.
The way his wife’s smaller body had felt against his own, curled into him, rubbing languorously against his cock— suffice it to say he had had to take many cold showers in the days following. Desire had never felt so burning, so painful against his skin.
Meenakshi Bannerjee Gaur was a beautiful woman, no doubt.
Objectively he might have seen more conventionally good looking women but her— mere words felt insufficient to describe her brand of striking attractiveness.
There was something almost divine, wrathful and savage inside of her. She had kept it under control but it snarled at him from its enclosure often, baring its gleaming fangs having gotten the scent of another predator nearby.
Shauryaman remembered watching her work the Laconte board once, when he had been called on time by his father in law for a majority shareholder’s meeting, almost two months prior.
She was a master manipulator.
A charm to see at work.
Wrapped in a beige dress that accentuated her waist and the curve of her hips just the right amount and yet maintained that border of powerful professionalism, she had gone for a very light makeup, no bold colors, no visible lines. As if she was showing transparency overtly, putting everyone at ease.
But Shauryaman knew better.
Having played the game of shadows and covers— deception and manipulation came as easy to him as breathing.
When you want to hide something, do not keep it locked up, show it in plain sight but surround it with enough glitter and glamor that every eye will be baffled in disoriented unfocus.
She had been a marvel.
Wielding words like precision tools and smiles like forbidden fruits hanging low enough to grab but would feel like benediction once directed at you, at the same time.
The board had voted in her favor alright.
Shauryaman had given her a smirk when he had met her eyes finally and she had just cocked a sharp eyebrow at him, unresponsive to his blatant provocation and marched off, clearly not concerned about keeping up appearances.
He hadn’t voted in favor of her suggestion if only to rile her up. He had already counted the votes on the faces of the other board members the moment she had finished. It had been hilariously unsubtle.
He had known his stance wouldn’t matter.
So it had been pure ragebaiting.
And maybe a little bit of curiosity.
His wife hadn’t risen to the bait, but.
It thrilled him— the constant game of push and pull that they seem to be playing. It felt like something real, something only they owned in a life that was ruled distressingly by a severe lack of privacy.
Something that called to his own wilderness like a siren song.
And the more he refused to answer it, the more he felt like he was being sucked into her terrifying gravitational pull.
It was petrifying— this much loss of control when he had bound himself to a staggering constraint for nearly a decade.
“I am fine..just took a hot shower”, he muttered pulling on his sweats.
“More like a scorching shower—”, his wife commented but didn’t pry anymore, moving away towards the bathroom.
She knew he wouldn’t say anything.
They talked a lot.
But not about anything important.
That was the unspoken rule, wasn’t it?
Shauryaman remembered her shaking in his arms, face buried inside his chest, trying to seek his warmth, his protection while thunder had lashed against the windows, outside. He had felt an uncharacteristic near violent surge of protectiveness that night.
He hadn’t even noticed how her body felt against his own. Only the feeling that he had to shield her had compelled him to almost bury her under his weight, physically putting his larger body as a barrier for anything to come.
It had worked miraculously and she had fallen asleep.
Waking up to the feeling of his wife curled into your chest had been a novel experience. He had stroked a fluttering hair off her sleeping face and had marvelled at the way his heart had almost shrunken in an effort to reach out to her.
My wife..
He had thought for the first time.
Someone who could belong to him. Someone he could belong to in return. No matter how strong one’s will was, at the end human beings had not been designed anthropologically to exist in isolation.
My wife.
Yet instead of pride, only a damning heartbreak had remained.
She would never know.
She can never know.
He would not do that to her. The safest option was to let her believe the worst of him. To let her distance herself and live in her own world, removed from his, safer than his, much brighter than his.
Shauryaman had put her gently on his side of the bed, pulled the covers on her and kissed her temple so softly his lips had barely touched her. Then he had dragged his screaming, protesting body out of the bed like a coward and hidden under the guise of nonchalance yet again.
Meenakshi had still squeezed his hand, still shown her unrequired gratitude, if only nonverbal but it had hit him like an arrow to the chest.
She was a much braver person than he.
As an answer to his question in the shower, the dream-woman’s body flashed in his mind. A graphically clear image. So real that he could still smell the rigor mortis again.
Shauryaman closed his eyes and swallowed a painful lump.
Yes it was worth it.
All the pain and the heartbreak and the sheer mental torture was worth it if he could pull the damned monster from his throne, bring his empire down around his ears and crush everything he has ever loved to fucking dust.
It was worth everything.
Even if he ended up losing everything.
Including a life with an incredible woman that he had begun to dream about, a life that probably would have been kinder to him than anyone and anything ever has.
But he didn’t have time for self pity.
He needed the call records of the phone he had slipped from the club. And he needed to get those permit plans for the gangster king of Mumbai.
He opened the door of his mother’s room with the spare key and slipped inside and then shut the padlocks. There was no other way of entering this room, except from the balcony but that was two stories up and oversaw the security cameras that he had installed inside.
The board pinned up on the wall in front was already covered in pictures and newspaper cuttings and stacks of sticky notes, a convoluted spider web of red thread seemed to join the entire display like a crocheted mesh.
Shauryaman replaced the sim inside his phone and dialed a number from the contact list.
The other person picked up on the second ring.
“Akshat, I need you to crack open a cell phone for me. I will get it to you tonight. Same place, same time. Order a bourbon."
“Just one?”, came from the other side, almost cheeky.
Shauryaman rolled his eyes, even if he knew the other man couldn’t see him and cut the call.
He leaned back on his chair and stared at the board. It had taken him nearly a decade to build all the connections, to find all the clues and gather the testimonies. And yet, it had fallen short. He had struck off the three thousand and forty seventh option a week back and no new solution was in sight.
But he was so close to his target.
He could finally see the end of the tunnel but the light glimmering from the other side could either be freedom or a nuclear explosion waiting to swallow him whole.
He had to meet with Justice Chaudhary.
There was a party being hosted in the CJI’s home next week and all the high court judges would be in attendance. Shauryaman had to secure an invitation somehow. It wasn’t a celebration where industrialists or their rotten heirs would be called to— especially not disbarred rotten heirs.
The only way in, would be as a plus one.
Richa Khosla was enamoured of him enough, all he had to do was rub in the slight he had thrown at her father a month ago, and she would be game. And if that wouldn’t suffice, he knew how to show a woman a good time—
Richa wouldn’t even care that he was married now. She would only get a thrill out of it.
Pulling men like bees hovering over nectar.
Arrogance will be her downfall one of these days.
Just like it had, for him.
Just like it would be for the fisherman.
Shauryaman took a dart and threw it with perfect aim to hit dead center on the face of the man whose photograph was pinned in the middle of the spider’s web.
I will have you, you fucking bastard.
“I will have you if it is the last fucking thing I ever do”, Shauryaman Gaur growled to the silence choking the otherwise empty room.
The sitar had stopped playing, finally.
__________________________
“Kia, you have to listen to the strings before tugging at them—”, Shauryaman instructed the twelve year old, who was listening to him with rapt attention, her small fingers pulling at the strings of the old sitar.
“See, one, two, three…one, two, three….maintain the chord as well as the rhythm”, he continued gently and demonstrated it on his own instrument.
Well, technically it was his mother’s instrument but she had left it to him.
His tiny student followed through with military focus and the eager determination of a pupil wanting to impress their teacher somehow. It tugged at his rotten heart somewhere. The girl was so desperate for approval that it reminded him of another twelve year old boy.
“Good”, he offered her awkwardly.
Praise came stilted and unused to his lips. It was like pulling teeth. Not because he couldn’t feel it but because the expression took more emotional labour than he could extend on most days.
It was tough to squeeze blood out of a heart having been beaten into stone years ago.
But Kia smiled so brightly that her dark skin started glowing like gold, being hit from the humid sunshine filtering inside the room where the ceiling fans were working overtime to counter the oppressive heat.
The cotton kurta he was wearing had stuck to his back with sweat quite uncomfortably.
The place was so atypical of his usual setting that he stuck out like a sore thumb despite his effort to acclimatize to it. He had foregone his usual expensive western clothes with a simple modest kurta over washed up jeans and black rimmed spectacles.
Not that anyone here would recognize the infamous playboy billionaire in this part of the town but he didn’t want to take any chances. He had read somewhere that wearing spectacles made it difficult for people to focus on identifiable features of a face without it.
He was sitting on the floor of the living room of the one-bhk flat. The sounds of children playing gully cricket on the narrow strip of road outside came in periodically. Someone was watching a Marathi soap opera on their tv down the corridor.
It was the usual atmosphere one would expect from a lower middle class housing complex in Parel.
Kia had already gone to the next string of notes and Shauryaman could see that she had practiced.
The girl had an uncanny ear for catching a tune.
Just like her mother.
“You know, you don’t have to do this, right? It's not like we are paying you to tutor her. We can barely afford three square meals most days—”
Shauryaman sighed and turned to the old woman who was leaning against the doorway, wiping her sweat streaked face on the pallu of her saree.
“That is because you adamantly refuse to accept the money I keep sending—”, he countered exasperatedly.
“Hey now..as far as I remember, you are the one paying for Kritika’s schooling and books and—”
“But it is not enough. I told you to get an AC and I sent the electrician that you sent away—”
“Beta, what do you think I should tell the landlord and the neighbours, how did I suddenly get money to buy an AC? They are getting suspicious anyway and you know we can’t—”
She stopped suddenly and wiped the corners of her eyes. He looked down and plucked at the string of his sitar, giving her time to compose herself.
“Your pride will be the end of you, aaji”, he muttered quietly.
“Pride is all I have left, beta. And Kritika. I can’t lose her too”, the old woman’s voice broke.
“You will not lose her”, Shauryaman snapped and then regretted his tone immediately.
“Kia, keep practising”, he instructed the twelve year old who nodded vigorously and
He got up fluidly, eager to move the ensuing conversation away from his young student’s ears. The sitar was a chore to pack and carry with him but he powered through, zipping it up and lifting it like a sling bag on one shoulder.
Then he stepped out of the room with the old lady.
“I have almost reached my goal”, he told her.
“What—”
“It is just a matter of months and I shall have him. I will have that brute grinding his nose on the fu— uhh ground.”
Akshat had come through with the call records.
“I hope you know what you are doing, Shaurya. This man will not be easy to catch. Not even for you”, his friend had said in between the sips of his bourbon.
“I don’t want to just catch him. If that were the case, I’de have done it years ago. No— I want to destroy him”, he had replied, sliding the digital copy of the call records that the former copied into a pendrive for him, inside his pocket.
Now he had a direct link connecting Tony Braganza and his target. He had given the permit plans to the old mobster turned businessman for building his clubs, just a week ago.
Now he was waiting on the summons.
“Boy, you stay away from that monster”, Kritika’s great grandmother said, clutching his arm desperately. There was fear naked in her cataract laden gaze.
The kind of animal fear that only the hunted had.
It felt like the hands that had had Shauryaman in a chokehold for years.
He removed her grasp gently and patted her shoulder awkwardly— still unused to the concern extended so undeservedly on him.
“Don’t worry for me. I have made enough noise all these years that try as he might, he couldn’t make me disappear. I have a shield that you all never did— I have money”, he tried consoling her.
“That will only go so far..he offered us the money but—”
A sudden sheepish voice from the corridor outside stopped both of them mid conversation.
“Arre, Bhosle aaji, I saw your young man from outside. If he is done teaching Kia, can he come and look at these papers for me, for a bit?”
“Arre Rajesh, how many times do I have to tell you that he is not your free legal counsel. And how many land disputes are you even embroiled in? What is that good for nothing lawyer of yours doing?”
Mrs. Bhosle snapped, irritated, making the middle aged man quiver in fear.
Bhosle aaji was the undisputed ruler of the community and even at the ripe age of seventy six, feared by everyone.
Shauryaman stifled his smile and slinked out, using the opportunity to escape the older woman’s well meaning, if only, unnecessary concern.
“Rajesh dada, come with me. I might not be able to fight your case but I think I can give your useless lawyer some wisdom. Come, come—”, he ushered the grateful man outside, clutching his papers.
After he had educated the idiot of an advocate fighting the neighbour’s case and refused the man’s repeated entreaties to pay him in lunch, Shauryaman found himself walking a good two miles on foot till he had left the locality behind and hailed an auto.
He had to reach the flat that he had bought here a few years ago, change into better clothes and take his car back to his house.
The Sunday heat was killing him.
Then his phone rang.
Richa.
He picked it up on the seventh ring. Not too fast and not too late. Just at the edge of lazy disregard and suppressed enthusiasm.
“Hey.. I was just thinking about you—”, he drawled seductively.
“Liar”, she giggled and then, “what is that godawful noise? Are you inside a generator?”
Shauryaman resisted the urge to pinch his nose.
“Im on a yacht, baby. You tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure”, he made sure to emphasize on the last word. It incited the correct reaction and the woman giggled sensually, clearly remembering the night they had spent a few days ago.
He still hadn’t managed to get her floral perfume off his skin, despite rubbing himself with the strongest smelling soap he had, for hours, till he had pruned and turned raw and red.
“I have the invitation for you…papa is friends with a defense attorney so— wanna come along?”, she asked.
Gotcha.
“Why not? I’ll pick you up at eight. Wear that red dress”, he added lecherously and cut the call before she could reply.
And if later in the evening, when he had entered the gates of the CJI’s house, had immediately ditched his date to go get himself acquainted with the high court judge, Justice PV Chaudhary’s decade younger wife, no one had thought much of it.
Typical of the Gaur heir to whore himself out.
His poor wife.
No one had even spared a second glance when Justice Chaudhary and Shauryaman Gaur had stood at the corner of the lawn, heads almost bowing together in deep conversation for the rest of the party.
_____________________________
It had been a few days after the party at the CJI’s house when Shauryaman found himself returning home at a more respectable time.
He had just entered the hall when Vimmi tai came scurrying towards him, hands twisting inside the pallu of the saree she wore as a uniform.
“Sir, I uhh— madam..”
“What happened?”, he asked, observing that she had been speaking at a tone much lower than normal, looking here and there as if an invisible tiger was waiting to jump on her at a moment’s notice.
“Madam has been in the gym since the afternoon. Rajan said he heard something breaking inside but we have been too afraid to enter and—”
Shauryaman dismissed her and started towards their built in gym.
Whatever he thought was happening, it surely hadn’t been this— the sight that he happened upon could belong in any biopic movie of an underdog kickboxer.
Meenakshi was slamming into a punching bag continuously, her form perfect and the force with which every individual hit rocked the hapless sand filled leather, the invisible shockwaves created in the air around could practically be seen.
She was wearing a bright orange sports bra and gym shorts that would have looked ridiculous on anyone but somehow managed to give the appearance of a model on a runway sticking to her ludicrously built body.
She was sweating and had he not seen the aftermath of a punching bag lying, sadly torn at the seams, at the other end of the gym, he wouldn’t have known where the noise Rajan had heard had come from.
Meenakshi was so engrossed in her boxing or rather destroying the punching bag that she hadn’t even noticed Shauryaman who had opened his shoes and left his jacket at the door and worn the extra pair of gloves himself.
Her hair was braided so tight it must have hurt, slapping continuously against her back and the air like a cobra with every violent movement.
It was like watching a warrior prepping for some end of the world battle.
“Want to hit a real person instead of that poor abused leather?”
His words almost made the latter swing around and she would have knocked the living daylights out of him, had he not managed to block the punch on time.
“Shaurya! Not now, please”, she snarled, gasping for breath and moving away.
He just quirked an eyebrow and gestured with his gloved hands.
“You afraid of fighting someone who can fight back?”, he challenged and felt his wife’s simmering temper boil over immediately.
He knew how to spot danger and right now, pissed as she was for some reason, Meenakshi Gaur could happily trample over a herd of elephants, let alone just one man. But he was also a reckless idiot with suicidal tendencies so he swung at her lightly.
‘Baiting an enraged tigress— good move, Shaurya!’, the last remaining cell of self preservation howled at him furiously.
“You wanted it—”, was all she hissed before swinging at him.
Shauryaman gasped and blocked the hit but could barely make his own as she just kept on coming at him relentlessly. They were dancing around in the entire gym now, him trying to not get his skull caved inside and her doing the best impression of Muhammad Ali on steroids.
At one time, she had hit one of his blocks with her leg so powerfully, he had stumbled back, getting the breath knocked out of his stomach and barely managed to not fall on his ass.
Meenakshi’s eyes were blazing, the sweat pooling around her glowing face, made the small flyaways and baby hair stick to her defined cheeks.
Shauryaman would never know how fury could look so besotting on anyone.
Anger had always looked ugly to him.
His father’s shouts, the screaming in the pubs and nightclubs, the vicious kicking and punching endured at the expense of information and appearances— but her. She was like a warrior goddess.
After all, what could one expect from the daughter of the Bengal Tiger himself.
The Major had taught his daughter well.
“Fuck!”, he cursed almost taking a knuckle sandwich to his cheek and blocked her next hit and completely missed her knee coming up in a graceful arc and slamming headfirst into his unprotected stomach.
Shauryaman dropped like a sack of potatoes and tried to breathe through the fire coursing through his lungs, flat on his back.
“Shit!”
Meenakshi kneeled beside him immediately and started prodding on his stomach as if checking for internal injuries.
“I told you! Why can’t you tone the godforsaken baiting down for one fucking second—”, she spat but panic had bled into her tone. She was trying to tug his top over the impacted area to inspect more, hands shaking slightly at the sheer adrenaline drop, he figured.
“Hey now— at least buy me dinner first”, he joked in between hissed breaths as her fingers poked the tight hot skin.
“Shut up!”
Meenakshi ordered him to breathe deeply and then did some odd sort of stretch and pull with his legs and upper torso and then wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him up with alarming ease.
“That would bruise brilliantly”, Shaurya said, looking over the impressive red and blue clotting over his skin, on the floor to ceiling length mirrors.
“How would I know you couldn’t take a tap”, his wife grumbled from underneath his shoulder, but that fury had tempered down.
“That was not a tap. That was a death blow—”
“Stop whining—”
“I am not whining. You should join MMA as a side hustle. Does this come under domestic violence? I should make a case if only for later when your lawyers cry alimony—”
“First of all, you are a pea-princess who bruises like a peach and you baited me so now don’t cry about it. Secondly, I will never want alimony, I’m richer than you—”
Shauryaman guffawed and looked down at her.
“You are not richer than me. I am twice your net worth—”, she poked him at his bruise like a she-demon and he gasped and tried moving away as they climbed the staircase to their bedroom.
“Your company is twice my net worth. The company you are leaching off like there is no tomorrow. You will be on the streets, by the time you gain control. That is if the board ever lets you—”, she said and dropped his weight on the bed.
He leaned back on the pillows and pouted at her in an incorrigibly immature way.
“You didn’t deny the domestic abuse allegations”, he sing-songed.
“You didn’t deny the pea-princess allegations”, she smirked at his rolling eyes and brought out the first-aid box.
He hissed slightly when she applied a very cold cream over the bruise but it mercifully numbed the area almost instantly. She said he was being a big baby and sank into the chair beside, unbothered about the sweat now sticking to its expensive upholstery.
“Why were you taking your anger out on the poor punching bags, anyway?”, he asked almost hesitantly.
She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. There was a strange emptiness in her eyes that felt painfully familiar.
“Have you ever loved someone and hated them at the same time with such a fervour that it makes you sick?”, she whispered.
Shauryaman raised an eyebrow but somehow immediately knew who she was talking about. He didn’t speak. He thought it was obvious. Meenakshi didn’t ask again because he knew she knew as well. She had bent down, hands over her knees, trying and failing to look unbothered.
“Mama…she has done everything for me, she built me into this person I am today. She is the strongest woman I know but..somehow while trying to make me strong, she had turned me to stone as well— just like her. I hate it.”
The tears springing to her eyes were unexpected and so sudden, it took him aback.
He looked away, suddenly awkward. But kept his fingers towards her hand that was clenching the bedspread, if only to gesture any sort of comfort.
It took her a long minute to compose herself.
He had taken that time to settle the words inside his mind. These were such important things, they couldn't be spat without thinking like he usually did with most of his thoughts.
“You are not stone, Meenakshi. You cannot be. This rage you feel, it is just the emotions you cannot express. As for your mother, I don’t know her well enough to form an opinion, but I know you— and a woman who can shape you, cannot be stone either. Maybe she has been left out in the cold for too long.”
Meenakshi was quiet for so long after he had spoken that he was afraid she had taken offence. Just as he was about to say something stupid if only to distract her, she spoke again.
“That was surprisingly wise. You sure, I didn’t hit you too hard, triggered a cognitive recalibration?”, her words were humorous but her cadence was warm.
Shauryaman grinned at her.
“Please, you need to hit my head for that and both of us know, I am much too stubborn to get redeemed like that. It would ruin my aesthetic."
She laughed and the clouds brewing on her face had finally misted off.
He didn’t know what came over him, but he cupped the side of her face. She stilled, topaz eyes going a little wide but she didn’t stiffen or move away immediately and he took it as permission enough. He rubbed his thumb gently over the miniscule scar practically invisible on the apple of her cheek.
She was staring at him, slightly behooved.
“Look at us…just a regular couple having daddy issues and mommy issues—”
Meenakshi smirked but still didn’t move away.
“And anger issues and alcohol issues—”, she added mischievously and he sniggered, finally dropping his hand and immediately missing the softness of her skin pressing into his own calloused one.
Yes, a right, regular couple they were, who solved their problems by punching each other.
Later that night, when both of them were trying to sleep, Shauryaman had squirmed on the bed a little, the pain from the bruise would flare up if he moved his abdominal muscles even a little bit and he just couldn’t find the correct position to sleep.
Meenakshi had suddenly rolled over and wrapped a leg over one of his and tucked her head under his chin, trapping him with her weight without touching the inflamed wound at all.
Her fingers had caressed the bruise from over his t-shirt lightly.
“I am sorry… I know you were just trying to distract me. I just—”, she whispered quietly in the dark and the sudden apology was more startling than the way she had moulded herself over him.
“It's okay, angrybird. I’ll consider it payback for all the times I’ve been an ass to you”, he whispered back, stealthily trying to run his fingers through her hair. If she had felt it, she hadn’t stopped him.
“If it was payback, I should have hit you harder”
“Hey!”
She giggled against his throat and he felt like his heart doing something incredibly goofy like a cartwheel inside his chest.
They had fallen asleep like that and the next morning, he had stayed in bed till his wife had woken up and deigned to lift herself from over him, grumbling about coffee, some client meeting, her entire body aching and it somehow being his fault and he had just smiled up at the ceiling like an idiot.
_____________________
One month.
It took one month of working with Tony Braganza before the summons came.
Shauryaman had been in some high end gentlemen’s club, watching the newly arrived Prince of Jaipur play polo with Ambani’s son in law. He was bored out of his mind and the only reason he was here was because someone had invited Harshvardhan and the latter had decided to drop it on him.
“Try not to embarrass me any further”, his father had said and sent him on his merry way like he was still a toddler.
“Mr. Gaur Jr. I believe”, the man had sidled up to him from somewhere and he pretended to startle.
“Mr.... should I know your name?”, he smirked at the reedy looking man who smiled at him like he was a retard, from behind his owl rimmed glasses.
Shauryaman knew him perfectly well.
The PA of the man he had been trying to meet for the past decade. He was so close now that he could practically taste it.
The sweet cold flavour of revenge.
“I am no one of import but my boss definitely is. And he wants to meet you. Heard you helped solve a problem for us in the Andheri project?”
Shauryaman drank the rest of his cognac and grinned.
“I may have pulled some strings.”
“He is very pleased. How does eight o’clock at the Taj sound?” , the nasally voice had started grating on his ears and he nodded vaguely.
“I do love their toasties”, he answered, pretending to be busy in the game in front.
“Very good sir. We shall be seeing you”, the man left just as inconspicuously as he had entered.
Talk about feeling like the protagonist of a Bond film.
‘Oh your employer shall be seeing me much more than he would have ever expected’
___________________
The meeting had gone on for three hours.
Shauryaman had given the best performance of his life, if he so believed.
The fisherman had looked convinced enough.
Tony Braganza had been his usual brand of scarily contemplative and had only added to the conversation whenever absolutely necessary.
He had recognized at least one supreme court judge, a very famous cardiac surgeon, three industrialists and two IAS officers in the round table. But his attention, like the rest, had solely been on the head of the table.
He had pretended to be pleasantly tipsy by the end, joking with his neighbours and letting them have their fun at his expense.
Later, back in his office, he called Akshat again.
“Oh for god’s sake, now what?”, his friend sounded half dead, no wonder— it had been one in the night but he was topped with enough adrenaline and scotch to rouse the dead.
“We have hit the jackpot, Chillar. Just came back from a meeting with our target”
“What!”, well now he sounded awake.
“Yup. Finally. He looks remarkably unremarkable in person, honestly.”
“The most venomous spiders look the least harmful—”
“Don’t I know it…”, he said, almost humorous.
“What are you planning to do now?”, Akshat Chillar asked, a little warily.
Shauryaman picked up the second dart and hit it dead center on the photograph in the middle. He had lost count how many times he had perforated that face plastered on the glossy surface of the photo.
“Now, we wait and I find a way to somehow get my ex’s deity-like husband to commit perjury in court without his knowledge.”
The sigh that came from the other side rang like the last breath of Promestheus after being sentenced to eternal agony by the Olympians.
“Sometimes I wonder about your sanity, my friend—”
Shauryaman couldn’t stop the giggle from escaping him. Maybe he was really tipsy.
“Isn’t that the million dollar question—”
___________________
The anniversary party was when it all came to head.
At least some of it.
Shauryaman, for the first time in his life, had actually wanted to attend the party. For some reason, people commenting on how handsome they looked together, how pretty his wife was, how lucky he was, was actually making him preen a little inside.
‘Like, yes, look at her. Can you believe it?’
‘She is gorgeous. She is my wife.’
It had been absolutely ridiculous considering there was nothing remotely husband-wife like about their relationship. He had to continuously remind himself that it was a contract at the end and that he was essentially deceiving Meenakshi in a way.
Even if he wanted to be with her, the foundation of their marriage couldn’t be based on a signed deal and a lie.
But overtly, at least he could enjoy the charade.
Meenakshi was looking mesmerizing in that forest green saree and for a second, Shauryaman had almost blurted out the truth. He had wanted to say, ‘you look beautiful’ but that would have been too intimate, too close to the truth, too near to his rotten heart— so he had turned it around slightly and said, ‘good. You look good.’
His wife had returned the compliment, in decent courtesy be it but it had still made his cheeks heat a little.
And then she had worn the earrings he had given her. She didn’t need to but she did. And it had made something long dead flutter inside his stomach.
Something he had ruthlessly crushed after Avantika had left his heart mangled and bleeding and splayed all over the floor for everyone to see.
“Looking gorgeous madam”, he had told her mother instead and Lata Bannerjee had smirked at him reminiscent of her daughter and swatted him away. He had shaken hands with the major, barely managing to stifle his wince at the sheer strength of the man’s hold.
No father would be too pleased with him anyway and he had slunk away to the bar, letting his wife handle the rest of the guests.
He had barely taken a sip of the whiskey when his father had come up beside him.
Harshvardhan Gaur had always had such an intimidating aura surrounding him, it was impossible to feel anything other than small in his presence. Or that could just be the twelve year old inside Shauryaman still waiting outside his father’s study door, hands trembling against the wood.
They had not conversed much in a way after the Surat plant deal had been lost.
“It is her night too”, his father said quietly from beside him, not looking at him but rather towards the guests chattering and drinking in front, “try not to ruin it.”
He smiled into the rim of the glass and swallowed the distraught ‘And me? What about me? Do you care about what it means to me?’ with the whiskey.
“Heard you were seen with Khosla’s daughter in the CJI’s housewarming party. Do you have any shame at all?”, Harshvardhan hissed in between his own sips.
“Would it matter to you if I answer that question or was it rhetorical?”, he said languidly. The single malt burned his throat.
“Sometimes I think it was good that your mother died young. She would have been appalled at how you have turned out—”
‘Wow. Low blow, daddy’
Two could play this game.
“Well the thing is, Mr. Harshvardhan Gaur, if you had prioritized my mother over your precious company for once in your goddamned life, maybe she would have been here to be appalled at my behavior.”
His father’s face twisted in clear hurt but Shauryaman was tired. He kept the glass down and walked towards the kitchen, eager to get out of the sights of their guests and more importantly, of Harshvardhan, before he said something he couldn’t take back again.
He had not seen the man following him or he would not have chosen to sequester himself away from anyone’s sights.
The kitchen was mercifully empty— the staff busy catering to their guests' needs.
Shauryaman braced his hands on the counter table and took deep breaths, trying to control his fury somewhat. The thought of his mother always hurt fiercely. He poured a glass of water and had just brought it to his lips when he felt the presence just behind him.
Years of paranoia and milling about in the seediest parts of town with a dangerous band of rogues would have alerted him of another presence immediately had the ever familiar cologne that always made him gag, hadn’t already.
He turned around fast enough to give himself whiplash and staggered back till the counter was poking uncomfortably in his lower back.
Prakhar Sahani was staring at him.
Gone was the mild mannered pleasant look always plastered on his face and the jocular demeanor that made people want to get close to him.
He had a macabre look of anger which somehow had turned his usually handsome features into a sore ugliness.
“You—”, Shauryaman gasped and tried looking over his shoulders for any escape but there was no one.
“You are testing my patience, kiddo. It is one thing not answering to me and ignoring me in the office, quite another to ignore my phone calls and insult me in front of both of our wives”, he snarled.
“You stay away from my wife!”, the younger man spat, trying to suppress the hysteria rising inside through brutal force.
“Hah, she is a pretty little thing but you know I am not interested in her—”, the man had his fingers trailing down Shauryaman’s face and the latter recoiled from the touch like being burned.
His heart was inside his throat.
Not here.
Not inside his home.
Meenakshi was here.
Oh god, Meenakshi was just outside—
“I will kill you—”, Shauryaman whispered and scrabbled behind him for something, anything that would protect him from the monster in front and found a handle.
“You..”, Prakhar laughed and grabbed his waist with a hand, tight enough to make the pain travel like pinpoints through his jacket and shirt, “you are just a silly boy who is still searching for daddy’s approval”
Shauryaman gripped the handle tightly, wincing at the pressure on his waist, stomach roiling in sheer unadulterated fear.
“You cannot keep doing this for long. One day, I will expose you and that wouldn’t be pretty..”, he tried pushing at him but for all his workouts and training, his strength fell useless in front of trauma.
He was twelve again.
And he couldn’t escape the monster in his bed.
Prakhar Sahani laughed slowly, almost pleased at his sniping.
“Oh you have grown a few little teeth have you? Don’t worry, I will break them off. Did you forget what I can do to you and your poor dear father? Do you really want that to happen, baby boy?”
Ice smothered his nerves and it was pure desperation that had him slashing the swiss knife he had managed to clutch in the air. Prakhar sprang back with a yelp and a dinner plate that had been balanced precariously on the edge of the sink smashed into pieces on the floor.
“You come near my family again and I will destroy you!”
Terror and terrible anger had mashed together in a ferocious magma-esque feeling burning him from inside out. He could barely breathe from it, the weapon gripped so hard in his hand he could feel the blade slice into his palm.
What if he just killed the man, right now. It would be so easy, slash his throat out and watch him gurgle and choke on his own blood on the floor. Watch the light leave his eyes.
There was a sick fascination in watching something die, wasn’t there?
“Shaurya!”
Meenakshi’s petrified voice was what brought him back to earth.
Prakhar’s expression changed almost dramatically from that sinister darkness to helpless fear. Shauryaman could not see through the anxiety gripping his chest, his hands were shaking and she was saying something.
She was right in front of him.
“---op the knife, please..”
The knife?
Oh, he dropped the knife almost immediately and couldn’t even register the sting of it and the blood that was falling into little droplets on the floor.
His wife had her back turned to him, talking to Prakhar and—
Oh god, she had seen him.
She had seen them.
In that position inside the kitchen, he was two seconds away from actually bringing the knife down on the monster’s face. He didn’t even know when his feet had started moving but before he knew it, he was gone from the kitchen and racing up the staircase.
Oh god—
__________________________
Meenakshi entered the bedroom, trepidation building inside her chest with every step.
She had never seen Shauryaman quite that unhinged before. And despite her assurances to Prakhar downstairs, she was wary about the state she would find the other man in.
But whatever she might have envisioned flew swiftly outside the window the moment she spotted him.
There was a narrow space between the heavy teakwood dresser and the king sized bed inside their bedroom and her husband was tucked right there, on the floor, leaning against the wall, knees drawn close to his own chest. His obsidian eyes were frozen wide on a completely colorless face.
It was like someone had ripped off an entire layer off him.
He looked painfully defenseless.
It jolted Meenakshi of her own confusion almost violently.
“Shaurya!”
He didn’t even react and she hurried towards him and kneeled in front. He looked like was intentionally trying to make himself appear smaller. Curled into his own body, reducing the surface area for impact. The effect was sickening to look at.
“Shaurya what..what happened? Are you okay?”, she whispered, her voice automatically lowering like she was trying to soothe a skittish horse.
Where was the enraged man from the kitchen?
That homicidal rage on his face that transformed into a piercing naked look of absolute blankeness. It was a terrifying to look on someone who had only ever appeared to swing between utter nonchalance and an annoying amount of vanity.
“Hey..hey..”, she was afraid to touch him so her hands hovered, a hair’s breadth away from his rigid body.
Shaurya’s eyes seem to focus on her, the pupils still wide like he was high on mushrooms or something. He seemed to drop another six shades if that was even possible and appear starchy, similar to the hospital sheets they put over corpses.
Meenakshi’s heart was hammering hard enough to probably be audible to all the guests downstairs.
He opened his mouth, tried speaking but only a helpless sort of gurgling noise seemed to come out before she could see the sweat gathering at the corner of his temples. He was trying to speak but it felt like some invisible ancient force had its paw wrapped around his throat.
“Shaurya..Shaurya..breathe, it's okay..can I please have your hand? You were bleeding—”, she hadn’t forgotten the unintentional wound he had given himself but his hands were clenched so tight over his own knees, it seemed like she would need a crowbar to pry his fingers off the material of his suit pants.
She could see the blood seeping in the black fabric making it glisten in the amber lighting of the room.
“I can’t…”, he managed to whisper, a dry rasp, unbecoming of the arrogant cadence that Shauryaman Gaur was infamously known to possess.
“Can’t what?”, she asked softly, keeping her hand on his white knuckles grip softly so as to not spook him more.
“Breathe..”, he wheezed suddenly and she could finally spot the bluish tinge to his veins, popping out in the back, “can’t breathe—”
Then she finally noticed that he was trembling. His entire body had locked up but he was vibrating like a tuning fork. And suddenly it was so very clear what was happening to him that Meenakshi wanted to hit herself for not realising it immediately.
“You are having a panic attack, sweetheart”, she whispered and held his quaking fingers, trying to pry them off his knee. He was chattering now, nearly on the verge of hyperventilation and he would asphyxiate if he didn’t slow down right now.
Frantic worry flew through her own veins but she couldn’t let it out. She had to calm him down somehow.
“Hey..Shaurya, look at me, look at me please… see breathe with me, can you feel my heart?”, she had finally managed to unclasp his own hand and brought it to her chest. He had gripped the silk of her saree on her chest, but it didn’t matter to her, at the moment.
As long as he could feel her heart beating rhythmically.
“Try to follow it..mimic it.. there thats good..thats very good, honey..”, the sudden endearments she had never spoken felt as easy as air on her tongue and she patted his shaking hand and scuttled closer to him.
His breaths were falling shorter but steadier with every second.
The blood seemed to return to his ashen cheekbones a little.
He was still too pale for her liking but it was progress.
She had no idea how long they sat like that, breathing together but finally Shauryaman’s muscles uncoiled and he let a deep audible breath out and seemingly collapsed against the wall, leaving her saree immediately.
“Can I touch you?”, she asked gently and he looked at her wearily, still unable to speak but nodded imperceptible anyway.
“Thank you. Your hand please—”, she took his wounded hand. The cut wasn’t too deep but she had to put antiseptic anyway, lest it catches infection. She was about to stand up and move away to get the first aid box when he suddenly grabbed her hand, eyes blowing wide in terror.
She sank down again and rubbed his hand.
“I will be right back, sweetie. You are bleeding. Let me get the first aid box, okay..I will be just here..alright? Please?”
He uncurled his fingers but looked miserable and she hated herself a little for prying the rest of his grip away but she had to get him some first aid. She almost slipped on her own saree in her haste to get to the box and bring it back as fast as possible.
Shauryaman was staring at the ceiling when she had come back and let her do her ministrations without any sound at all. Meenakshi never thought she would miss the whining but at the moment she would take anything as long as he spoke. She put the antiseptic and bandaged his hand tightly.
“Want to get off the floor?”, she asked but he scuttled back and seemed to lock into himself again.
“Okay okay..we can sit here too..”, she sat down more comfortably, cross legged and adjusted her pallu.
“You want to tell me what happened in the kitchen?”
Shauryaman stared through her. It was unnerving. It wasn’t like he couldn’t meet her eyes, more like he didn’t know that he wasn’t. He curved a little over his knees again, looked at the ground and shivered once.
She could wait. These things took patience.
He didn’t make her wait too long though.
“I..just…wanted him to…go away.”
The words were spoken haltingly, like it took extra effort to form the syllables and Meenakshi was intimately aware of trauma. She knew the bone deep exhaustion of coming out from an episode of this severity.
She had just not expected it out of her husband.
The words themselves registered only a second later.
She frowned and tried picturing the scene again in her mind. Shaurya with the knife, Prakhar backing away. It didn’t—
Then it was like a truck hitting her.
Like lightening striking her.
Her head spun.
She could barely breathe through the sudden jolt of horror that filled inside her synapses like crystallised ice. All the disjointed scenes between the wizened CEO of Gaur Constructions and its heir, the moments where he deliberately ignored him, walked right in the opposite direction on seeing him approach, the way he had screamed bloody murder that evening when she had called them—
The moment in the kitchen, blade drawn again— it was not the anger of a predator wanting to cut down a rival in his territory. It was the desperate fury of a prey having been cornered with no escape.
Her husband wasn't angry at seeing Sahani. He was terrified.
And suddenly like a blazing light being thrown in the darkened corner of a room, everything became so crystal clear that it hurt her eyes.
The scenes were all coloured wrong in her mind.
The wine bottle slamming down on the table, followed the tremor of his hand that she had noticed but forgotten in her own rage, the uncontrollable shaking in the kitchen hadn’t been maniacal murderous wrath but absolute unadulterated terror.
Meenakshi knew this kind of fear.
She was a woman after all.
And unfortunately every woman genetically is born knowing this kind of terror.
The realisation came with a sudden surge of acute nausea and she had to clasp her hand on her mouth trying to force the bile back inside.
The times she had laughed with Prakhar Sahani, eaten food with the man, let her hug him—
She clutched her head and crushed her eyes closed and counted till ten.
When she opened her eyes, Shauryaman was looking at her, this time the fear on his face was different. This one was borne out of something else. The primal feeling of shame that afflicted the mind like a jailor keeping him captive in a quagmire of guilt.
“Did he hurt you?”, she asked, voice nearly gone at the force of her own guilt.
His face lost whatever color it had gained again. He was holding her hand suddenly, a violent desperation in the sudden strength of his grip.
“Please.. You can’t tell anyone.. You can’t. He will destroy the company. He will.. You can’t—”, his breaths were falling faster again and she could practically taste the anxiety blowing up again.
She removed his grip with deadly force and wrapped her arms around his shaking body. She had pulled him down to fit the crook of her neck, his hands were spasming on her back and she swallowed the lump stuck in her throat painfully.
“Did. He. Hurt. You?”, she gripped him tighter, trying to physically force his body to calm down through her own.
He whimpered against her neck. A sound she wouldn’t have known, he could make.
And that was answer enough.
The nausea had brought with it a blinding rage. She could practically feel it beating inside her throat. She wanted to smash something, destroy the entire room. Go back to the gym and tear the punching bags open.
“Sweetheart..listen to me. He won’t hurt you again, okay. He will never hurt you again. I will kill him. I will drag him out by his fucking throat and rip his fucking dick off—”
‘Breathe, breathe, you can’t lose control, not now, not here, not yet—’
“No!”, he cried out suddenly and pulled himself away.
His eyes were wild under his disheveled hair. He looked painfully young.
“What—”, she began but he held her hands desperately.
“Promise me. You won’t go after him!”
“But—”
“Meenakshi, I am begging you. No! No please. I can’t take it if he— you won’t go after him. Just promise me. Now. Do it”
“Okay..okay, calm down please”, she rubbed his nape and he dropped his head into the crook of her neck, tired, suddenly falling weightless in her hold.
Evidently the last bout of excitement had been enough on his nerves.
“Lets get you to the bed, okay?”, she distangled herself from him and pulled him up by his waist. He was like a ragged limp doll, letting her maneuver him in whichever way he desired.
She was feeling sick.
She set him on the bed and pulled his jacket and his shoes off and then drew the covers over him. She would have helped him undress, get him into something more comfortable but he deserved whatever dignity was left.
Shauryaman tugged at her hand weakly, looking up at her through half lidded eyes. He was clearly drowsy. His mind shutting down in self defence, letting his body rest forcefully if anything. It was common after a panic attack of such proportions.
Meenakshi sat down on the edge of the bed, beside him and saw her husband curl around her body like he was unconsciously trying to seek her warmth. She felt her eyes burn and hesitantly placed a hand over his forehead.
When he didn’t recoil, she let her fingers rake through his hair in a long forgotten rhythm she remembered her mother used to do when she would fall sick as a little girl.
He had closed his eyes but kept holding onto her hand.
“Why didn’t you just tell me? That evening when I called him…”, she whispered thickly, unable to let the consequences of her ignorance leave her mind, try as she might.
For a moment she thought he had fallen asleep.
But then he answered. His voice was so low she had to bend down to hear the sleep softened words.
“I didn’t think you would believe me..papa didn’t. Who would believe me..”
And then he opened his eyes slightly again, a small frown of consternation darkening his face and he tried squeezing her fingers with whatever strength was left in his body.
“I am sorry. I ruined your evening—”
Meenakshi wanted to laugh. But it came out like a sob. And before she knew what she was doing, she bent down and pressed her lips on his temple. He fluttered his eyes shut again and she kissed his forehead and then the corner of his eye, blotting the tear he probably didn’t realise had escaped.
It was like she had forgotten everything. The hate she had felt for the man, at the early days of her marriage, now curled around her like a caterpillar. The absolutely disgusting notions she had about him and more importantly, the detached nonchalance at his existence.
At this moment she felt like someone had torn her heart out of her chest and stamped on it for good measure.
Her own tears slid down her face into his temple as she pressed her forehead against the skin there and struggled to breathe through the guilt and the anger and the regret and the absolute soul shattering horror that was bubbling in her blood.
Twelve.
He had been twelve.
The way Prakhar Sahani had looked at Pauravi Gaur’s picture that day in the lobby and the way he seemed to defend Shauryaman to everyone— it was all so twisted she wanted to vomit.
She had promised her husband that she won’t go after him and she will honor that despite her better judgement and an intense desire to shoot the bastard in the face but he will not step inside their home again.
Not as long as she was in this house.
Never again.
_______________________
Meenakshi stormed out of the room, after making sure Shauryaman was fast asleep.
She could see their guests chattering happily from the balustrade above. She could see Prakhar Sahani laughing aloud near the bar, encircled by a group of admirers as usual, Harshvardhan leaning aside on the bartop, chuckling with his friend.
It sent a pure white heated rage through her entire body.
How dare he!
How fucking dare he stand in her home after what he had done to her husband!
How fucking—
Even before she was aware of what she was doing, she had plucked off a champagne flute from the tray kept on the server’s desk and smashed it on the ground, shocking everyone into complete silence.
There was a foggy haze of crimson that had curtained her eyes.
She could barely breathe with all the rage ballooning inside herself. She had no idea when she had already reached the bartop. She hadn’t noticed the way her parents were trying to catch her eye, she hadn’t noticed her father in law calling out to her, confused at the sudden diametric transformation in her countenance.
She was locked onto her target like a missile in the air.
Meenakshi felt the awareness come back to her a little when she felt the sting of her skin splitting and the ensuing tingle of the impact rattling her entire right arm after she had already bashed her knuckles inside that monster’s face.
The alarmed gasps of the guests and the horrified shriek of Leena Sahani barely fazed her.
“Get the fuck out of my house!”
She had snarled viciously.
“What the hell! Have you gone mad?”, someone, maybe Harshvardhan or her own father or maybe another of the older men in the company cried out horrified.
She didn’t care.
She wanted them out. All of them. The entire party of glittering clowns hiding their teeth behind their plastic smiles and false wishes.
“Get out!”
She screamed again, sounding a little unhinged herself.
“All of you! Out of my house!”, she snapped.
Harshvardhan was trying to lift his barely conscious friend from the ground with the help of the latter’s wife, throwing horrified and enraged glances at her. From a third person’s perspective, she had indeed done something completely crazy.
But she cared not, for anything at the moment.
“Meena, what have you done? Why did you hit Mr. Sahani?”, her mother’s sharp hiss of disbelief got Meenakshi to observe how everyone else was mumbling amongst themselves, throwing her wide eyed glances.
Why were they all here again?
She plucked off the whiskey decanter from the bartop and threw it with all her might on the opposite wall, narrowly missing the head of a poor bartender making everyone jump and finally cry out in restrained fear.
“Didn’t you hear me? The party's over! Get moving. Chop chop!”, she showed them the way quite disrespectfully and completely uncharacteristic of her usual poise.
“She has gone mad..”
“Is she drunk?”
“I think her husband has started to rub off on her—”
“This is what happens when you have too much money…”
The guests had reluctantly started filing out of the hall, clutching their pearls and their spouses hands. The servants that had been startled into inaction, started helping them out as if catching onto her unspoken command.
This would definitely make headlines tomorrow in some tabloid gossip columns.
Meenakshi Gaur, loses her mind, knuckle punches the CEO of Gaur Constructions and threatens her guests on the day of her first wedding anniversary.
Fantastic.
The stock prices of Laconte might take a drop.
But Meenakshi didn’t care.
She didn’t care about her parents still trying to prod her for what had happened or Prakhar Sahani giving her a nasty yet chillingly calm look or Harshvardhan half furic and half befuddled, trying to help the former with a handkerchief which was now drenched in blood.
“I am so sorry, Prakhar, I don’t know why she did this.. I..”, Harshvardhan sounded genuinely distraught as his friend shook him off, muttering, “its okay”s under his breath.
Meenakshi wanted to drop kick him.
“I was only trying to help you and your husband, Meenakshi. You should have realised that instead of acting so irrationally”, Prakhar said, through a blotted muffled nose, having been seated on the chair, his wife and friend had helped him into.
Oh this right fucking manipulative bastard.
Her hands were itching for another punch but she restrained herself.
“You, so much as breathe the same air as Shaurya again and I will kill you myself!”, she growled like a hunting lioness.
“Meenakshi!”, Harshvardhan snapped angrily, “be in your limits. Has that boy filled his nonsense in your head too? What the hell are you—”
“The only reason he is still breathing is because of something your son refuses to tell me, and you”, she whirled around, that still scorching rage directed at her father in law, “you should be fucking ashamed of yourself!”
“Meenu—”, she ignored her father’s warning.
“He was a child! He was just a boy and you should have protected him! You are his father! You should have—”, she shut up remembering the horror struck expression on Shauryaman’s face and his desperate plea for her to not pursue this.
She gritted her teeth and swallowed the rest of the words in.
“Protected him from what? What are you even saying—”, Harshvardhan shouted incredulously.
“Why don’t you ask your dear friend!”, she snapped, “now get out of my house, all of you!”
Riddhiman seemed to have broken out of his baffled stupor and tugged at his wife’s arm and turned to Harshvardhan and Prakhar, the latter was staring at Meenakshi almost daringly, half his face hidden behind the sodden hanky.
“Mr. Gaur, I think it's best we leave right now. Mr. Sahani needs medical attention. I will talk to my daughter later—”
Meenakshi bristled at that. It was like her father was saying he will school his errant child after the adults are gone.
But at least she got to kick that monster out of her home, this way.
Riddhiman and Harshvardhan supported Prakhar on his way out. And only then did Meenakshi realise that Mrs. Sahani was staring at her but instead of the humiliated anger and horror she was expecting, there was almost a knowing melancholy on her lean face.
‘Oh so you knew too, didn’t you? Why didn’t you say something, you cowardly woman!’, she wanted to scream at her.
But alas, Meenakshi knew all too well to spot the signs of abuse in someone.
Years of psychological trauma left marks on a person’s face.
Shauryaman had hidden them behind a livid arrogance and devil may care persona and Leena Sahani had hidden behind servile submission and isolation.
Meenakshi just shook her head in defiance and turned away, letting the poor woman follow the others out.
“I hope he is worth the mess you have just made”, her mother’s parting words reverberated in the empty hall which now bore witness to the aftermath of a simple anniversary party that ended up in blood spilled.
Meenakshi huffed, stared at the broken glass, spilled whiskey and the blood staining the marble and walked up the staircase at a more sedate pace.
The rage had left a suffocating grief behind and she didn’t know how to grapple with it.
_________________________
Shauryaman woke up with a start.
It had been a dreamless sleep.
The heavy kind of slumber that left you feeling discombobulated even hours after waking up. The room was still dark and somehow he knew that it was still night outside. There was only the sound of the air conditioning and the soft rhythmic breaths of another person audible.
He turned slightly and was rewarded with the sight of his wife, deep in sleep, her hair splayed on the white pillow covers almost like a halo. She was turned towards him, chest rising and falling softly under her cotton nightshirt.
He realised that she had her fingers entangled with his on the covers in between.
It made something ache sweetly inside his chest.
She had believed him.
He hadn’t even had to say much or justify himself. She had believed him. She had not turned him away, or looked at him with disgust or worse— pity.
She had been angry, instead.
On his behalf.
He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had been angry on his behalf. Or hold him like that. Like she wanted to be the physical barrier protecting him from all the evils in the world. A human armour.
He remembered the fragrance of her perfume, the hint of vanilla and neroli oranges in her skin where he had dug his nose, the touch of her fingers through his hair. If he imagined hard enough he could sense the slight affection.
There was an odd pressure, like a feather on certain places on his face.
He didn’t know from what but it was pleasing.
Very pleasing.
He wanted to turn around and fall back asleep, maybe brave the distance a little and snuggle against her side. She looked so inviting, her posture so much more open than usual.
She would indulge him tonight, wouldn’t she? Just for tonight? He could resume the act tomorrow, right?
But something was niggling at the back of his mind.
He certainly wasn’t a clairvoyant but it wouldn’t do to ignore such strong intuition for so long. So he turned to the other side, gently disentangling his fingers and picked out his mobile from the side table.
It was vibrating.
The caller id was unknown.
Shauryaman wanted to put it back down but that feeling of wrongness wouldn’t let him. He picked up the call instead and the other line crackled with a very familiar if, somewhat afraid, voice.
“Hello? Mr. Gaur? I..you said to call if—”
“Soma?”
He sat up straight, adrenaline building up immediately, all thoughts of sleep and softness having flown from his mind.
“Sir, he contacted me again last night. He was furious, demanding to know who I was talking to. I think he might know it's me—”
Shauryaman repressed the urge to laugh like a lunatic with much difficulty.
Ten fucking years.
I have you now, bastard!
“The Swandive. Meet me there”, he whispered hastily on the phone and slid out of the covers, almost tripping over his own feet in hurry.
“Now?”, came the incredulous voice from the other side.
“Right the fuck now, Mittal. And please don’t get killed on the way. His men might be on watch”, he hissed and cut the call.
Suddenly Meenakshi turned in her sleep, sighing and Shauryaman froze. She was on her back now, still dead to the world. He hoped her dreams were sweeter than her reality was going to be in a few hours.
A sudden pang of vicious regret went through his heart.
He wished—
He wished for so many things.
Shauryaman bent down as noiselessly as he could and gingerly pressed his lips on her forehead. She didn’t stir and he mentally apologized to her.
Amongst all the actors and pawns in this game, she had always been the uncounted variable.
He hadn’t expected her.
But the game was already set.
And now it was time to burn the entire fucking board down and all Shauryaman could do was pray that she would be the only one escaping unscathed.
To be continued...
